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‘Gotham’ Season 1 Episode 19 Recap: “Beasts of Prey”

When we last left off with Gotham, Fish Mooney had made herself the Dollmaker’s right hand, earning his trust. Along with his approval, Fish is given a room with an open window looking out over the ocean, giving her the idea of escaping off the island. Fish spies a helicopter and tries to sneak outside. She’s outside for barely a few minutes when she gets stopped by a ranger who is called “The Catcher” (his name is self-explanatory). He warns her that if he catches her escaping again, he will kill her.

Fish goes back into the basement and tells her friend Kelly, one of the people recently harvested for organs, that she is planning their escape. Fish rounds up a gang of cold hard killers and claims she plans to escape by boat. She sneaks into the Dollmaker’s office and steals a set of keys, but just as she is in possession of them, he walks in on her in his office. Fish secretly grabs a dagger and hides it behind her back as the Dollmaker demands to know if she was trying to escape. When Fish begins to lie to him, he threatens to shoot her in the abdomen if she doesn’t confess. Fish, terrified, takes her hands out from behind her back and reveals the dagger. She does confess, but doesn’t tell him about her trying to escape. She instead tells him that he is the most dangerous man she has come across and that she is terrified of being turned into the Frankenstein manager before her. She would rather take her own life than slit his throat. Flattered, the Dollmaker allows her to leave, and Fish continues on with her plan.

She manages to set up the hardened criminals as a distraction and sends them running for the boat as she goes back for Kelly and the others who are recovering from having their organs “donated.” As she is about to set them free, she gets stopped by the Dollmaker, but has her gang of “harvested” people beat him up. The hardened criminals watch as Fish and the injured people load up into the helicopter and realize they’ve been set up. Unfortunately, they all get shot dead by the Catcher and that’s the end of that. But just as Fish is in the air and almost home free, the Catcher manages to aim a shot through the helicopter. Fish screams in pain at benign shot in the side, and Kelly and the others begin panicking over whether Fish will be able to fly or not. We’ll find out next episode, I guess…

At the Wayne mansion, Jim Gordon pays Bruce a visit. He asks Bruce why he lied about who stabbed Alfred, and warns Bruce that if Alfred wants to go after who stabbed him (Alfred’s old friend, Reggie Payne) on his own, it will be dangerous, and tells Bruce to stay out of it. Bruce says he understands, but doesn’t reveal anything else, and Jim realizes he’s gotten nowhere in trying to convince Bruce to be safe.

Alfred tries to leave the Wayne mansion to catch Reggie, but he is still not well and begins bleeding again. He tells Bruce to find Reggie at a shooting gallery, which Bruce mistakes for a gun range. He finds Cat and tells her about the gun range, but she corrects hi manx takes him to a shooting gallery, which is an empty warehouse where drug addicts live (Bruce, you were very, very off). Bruce and Cat find Reggie and wake him up to question him. Reggie is forced to give them information when Cat steals his “medicine” (drugs) and dangles it out of the window. When he finally tells them that a man named Bunderslaw hired him to steal from the Wayne mansion, he realizes he is in the clear and then threatens that he will report them to Wayne Enterprises. As he goes to get his drugs from the window, Cat pushes him out the window when Bruce can’t bring himself to do it. She does this to keep Reggie from telling on them, but Bruce is disturbed to watch Cat pretty much murder him (it’s presumed that he is dead, but you never know with this show).

Meanwhile, at an inconspicuous small bar, the Penguin is trying to convince the owner, a feisty old lady who also happens to be his henchman Gabe’s mother, to become a silent partner. Eventually, the lady agrees to the Penguin’s proposition in exchange for “getting rid” of her granddaughter’s slimy musician boyfriend. Gabe doesn’t seem to understand why the Penguin wants his grandmother’s place so badly, and after finally taking care of the musician and gaining partnership in the bar, the Penguin reveals to him that this bar is where he intends to kill Don Maroni.

In the Gotham police archives, Moore, a young police officer, wants Gordon to take over a presumably cold homicide case. Moore says that he and other young officers admire Gordon’s work, and his bringing Gordon the case is his way of trying to help in cleaning Gotham up. Flattered, Gordon accepts the case, and tells his girlfriend and GCPD forensics expert Leigh about it. She realizes that the victim, Grace Fairchild, was found in her neighborhood, South Village, and is horrified to find out that she and Grace were also the same age. Gordon goes on to say that they couldn’t find the bar Grace was last seen in, but Leigh tips him off to look into the several speakeasies that may have been missed.

Gordon brings the case to Bullock’s attention, but Bullock wants nothing to do with it. He is nevertheless dragged into it and the two begin their research. Edward Nygma helps them get information on South Village speakeasies and research the rest of the case. While Nygma is away trying to solve the puzzle, Gordon and Bullock begin investigating the speakeasies. They find one in particular and discover from the bartender that Grace Fairchild was in fact there with a handsome date a few months ago, around the same time as her murder.

Back at forensics, Leigh has finished examining Grace Fairchild’s body and points out that other than cuts on the victim’s throat and heart, the rest of her body isn’t traumatized. Leigh begins to speculate that the victim possibly ran away and committed suicide due to the unusual condition of the body, but Gordon takes the victim’s lifestyle into account. Grace had a good job and had even called her mother the night she went missing, and believes that it is unlikely that someone like her would have wanted to kill herself. Gordon deduces that she was kidnapped and held hostage for four months before being found dead two weeks earlier. Gordon becomes more intent than ever to find her killer and continues to find evidence.

Nygma comes up with new evidence and shows the detectives a photo of a broken ceramic heart that was found near Grace’s body. As soon as Bullock sees the photo, he knows exactly who killed Grace. He informs Gordon about he “Don Juan” killer, who is better known as “the Ogre,” and tells him that the broken heart is his calling card. Bullock explains the Fairchild case went cold because whenever a cop tries to go after the Ogre, he comes after the people the cops most love. Gordon is terrified to discover this information, fearing that getting involved may put Leigh’s life in danger. This leads Bullock and Gordon to question Moore, the officer who first brought Gordon the case, and find out that Loeb sent him to flatter Gordon and get him involved in the case.

Unfortunately Loeb’s plan worked, and Gordon couldn’t be more angry about his circumstance. Gordon, being the quintessential “good cop,” refuses to back down from the case even though he is fully aware of what it entails. When he comes across Loeb in the archives, he gives him a piece of his mind and threatens to come after Loeb when he’s done with the Ogre.